St. Nicholas Day!

Although there were no chocolate letters, we did celebrate St. Nicholas Day on the 5th- keeping up our Dutch traditions! The kids loved finding candy in their shoes. And Evelyn asked me to snap this photo after her ballet class that day in front of her favorite Christmas tree.

 

Halloween

We kept the pirate theme for Halloween as well:

Edward's birthday

Ahoy! For Edward's third birthday, we invited all his mateys over for a pirate party. I made seven seas cupcakes, a Captian Hook / Jake and the Neverland Pirates cake, served Ye Ole Salty Taters (chips), Sea Water, Pirate Punch, Shark Bait (goldfish), Cannonballs (BBQ meatballs), Watermelon Sails, and Hot Dog Boats. Roger built this awesome pirate ship out of an old picnic table, pallet wood, a 2x2 and a sheet of plywood using borrowed tools. It is a playtime favorite! Sturdy enough for years of fun. Happy birthday to our little guy.

 

  

Pottery

One of the nicest handicrafts here is the pottery. Here is our trip to A'Ali pottery when we bought our clay pumpkins and a ghost- less expensive than the real thing! We got to talk with the potters themselves. Here is an oven / kiln just opened to cool full of ghosts and pumpkins. Evelyn got to stick her fingers in the clay out back!

Scientist

My little guy is a scientist! He loves the Bahrain Science Center. He loves They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science- a DVD full of science music videos and he sings a really cute version of the element song- he knows we are made of mostly carbon, oxygen and nitrogen! And he can name  all of the planets in our solar system correctly (most of the time, when he feels like it:).

  

Ev's birthday

Sorry I haven't been blogging this year- here is a catch up of the last four months starting with Ev's birthday. We had it at a ceramics painting place and it was a lot of fun!